Veronique de Rugy's Claim That Taxes Cannot Rise Above 19% of GDP No Matter What Happens to Tax Rates: For the Virtual Green Room

Ubiquitous libertarian anti-tax pundit Veronique de Rugy pulls out the old hackneyed Republican line that tax revenues can't go above 19 percent.... I've seen versions of this dating back two decades. Part of the scam is a simply visual trick familiar to anybody who read "How To Lie With Statistics" -- you scale the chart to make a major change appear tiny.... Here's a chart showing the range of revenue within a reasonable scale... the swings are fairly dramatic. De Rugy's chart purports to show that reducing the top marginal tax rate produced no real change in revenue. But of course the first Reagan tax cuts in 1981 caused revenue to plummet. The top marginal tax rate was also reduced in 1986, but that was accompanied by equally large reductions in tax expenditures, and the whole reform was not designed to reduce revenue.

Meanwhile, the tax hikes by George W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- which supply-siders claimed would not increase revenue -- were followed by a massive spike in revenue. And then the tax cuts by George W. Bush -- which supply-siders claimed would not reduced revenue by very much -- were followed by a massive, 5% of GDP drop in revenue, which receded to 2% of revenue at the peak of the 2000s economic cycle.

Rebuttals to talking-points misinformation that I want to have at the forefront of my brain--for when I am surprised, as I will be, by an unexpected question from an unexpected direction while talking to reporters, phone callers, passers-by, radio interviewers, cable TV interviewers, etc....

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Ubiquitous libertarian anti-tax pundit Veronique de Rugy pulls out the old hackneyed Republican line that tax revenues can't go above 19 percent.... I've seen versions of this dating back two decades. Part of the scam is a simply visual trick familiar to anybody who read "How To Lie With Statistics" -- you scale the chart to make a major change appear tiny.... Here's a chart showing the range of revenue within a reasonable scale... the swings are fairly dramatic. De Rugy's chart purports to show that reducing the top marginal tax rate produced no real change in revenue. But of course the first Reagan tax cuts in 1981 caused revenue to plummet. The top marginal tax rate was also reduced in 1986, but that was accompanied by equally large reductions in tax expenditures, and the whole reform was not designed to reduce revenue.

Meanwhile, the tax hikes by George W. Bush and Bill Clinton -- which supply-siders claimed would not increase revenue -- were followed by a massive spike in revenue. And then the tax cuts by George W. Bush -- which supply-siders claimed would not reduced revenue by very much -- were followed by a massive, 5% of GDP drop in revenue, which receded to 2% of revenue at the peak of the 2000s economic cycle.

Rebuttals to talking-points misinformation that I want to have at the forefront of my brain--for when I am surprised, as I will be, by an unexpected question from an unexpected direction while talking to reporters, phone callers, passers-by, radio interviewers, cable TV interviewers, etc....